The nucleon-induced deuteron breakup process as a laboratory for chiral dynamics

Abstract

The nucleon-induced deuteron breakup reaction is studied within the Faddeev approach at incoming nucleon laboratory energies of 135 and 200 MeV. The chiral semilocal momentum-space (SMS) potential developed up to N4LO+, supplemented by the N2LO three-nucleon interaction, is used. Our investigation is focused on the determination of theoretical uncertainties in a predicted cross section related to its dependence on the value of the cutoff parameter of the regulator. We also compare predictions based on the complete N2LO potential with those based on the two-nucleon force upgraded to the N4LO+ order and augmented with the N2LO three-nucleon force. In addition, we study the three-nucleon force effects predicted by this model of interaction. Our systematic study covers the entire kinematically allowed phase space; however, our main results are obtained when additional restrictions on energies and cross section values are imposed. In such a case, we observe that the dependence of the differential cross sections on the regulator cutoff is moderate at 135 MeV and much stronger at 200 MeV. For the latter energy, it can amount to up to 45% in specific kinematic configurations. Taking into account terms beyond, N2LO in a two-body interaction changes the cross section up to 20% (27%) at E = 135(200) MeV. The inclusion of the three-nucleon force leads to effects of approximately 27% at both energies. We illustrate these dependencies with a few examples of the exclusive cross section as a function of the arc length of the S-curve.